I’m amazed how Netflix’s “Formula 1: Drive to Survive” series has actually made F1 popular here in the United States. My early 20s neighbors told me last week how into the sport they are — and while this might seem normal today, it wasn’t always the case.
I started following F1 when I was in middle school, waking up at 3am on a Sunday to watch Mika Hakkinen and Michael Schumacher battle for the 1998 F1 championship title.
Let me tell you, in 1998, this type of enthusiasm for F1 doesn’t make you the most popular kid at the lunch table. But I just loved the sport despite it not being anywhere close to the same league as baseball and football.
I put every dollar of my meager savings into a steering wheel simulator so I could practice driving the F1 tracks myself. I watch these excellent Netflix episodes and still recognize, decades later after playing my simulator as a kid, what you should do at a certain famous turn at Spa Francorchamps.
So a waste of time, clearly. I couldn’t converse in the normal language of baseball, basketball, or football. But…
Years later at a very large hedge fund I was working at, an important person there happened to also love the sport. We bonded over it, and in fact, ended up attending the Monaco Grand Prix together. That was a blast, and strengthened my professional network.
One last high school example before I do the obligatory crypto story. I had this friend in my home town who was an extracurricular pariah. His one and only passion in high school? Building fully functional, scale, steam locomotives in his backyard. Tracks, stops, switches, and all.
It was insane — he looked like a lunatic riding these miniature models. But he just loved steam locomotives all his life. And as his contemporaries looked down upon this quirky hobby while they pursued the standard class president and captain of the soccer team stuff, this guy received early admission to both Harvard and MIT. Because of that clear, yet unpopular passion. Nobody laughed at him after that.
Recently, I’ve talked to folks who bring up the fact that I was one of the few voices years ago loudly pushing back against the idea that crypto would never be worth anything, but we could salvage the blockchain technology to help banks.
Man, I got yelled at by so many of my stakeholders for that stance. But the fact is, I didn’t have a passion for optimizing a bank’s back office systems — crypto as an asset class was always it. That long term patience with an at the time unpopular passion paid off just fine.
But I gotta say, 5 years later, I do laugh when I see all the crypto related advertising being shown in…of all places? Formula1.
